


The Sky Torn Open

by severinne



Category: Caprica (TV)
Genre: Hate Sex, M/M, PWP, Tattoos
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-03-05
Updated: 2010-03-05
Packaged: 2017-10-15 02:10:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,017
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/155924
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/severinne/pseuds/severinne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Joseph needs Daniel’s help.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Sky Torn Open

‘Joseph.’

His name was not the first thing Daniel had intended to say, but it slipped from his lips as easy as breath. He should have been confused, even angry to see Adama lurking in the road to his house, wild-eyed and terrifying in his way. His hands clenched tight on the steering wheel, tighter still when the other man stumbled alongside his car and leaned in through the window. It was a calm and temperate night, but he might have forgotten for seeing the sweat beading on Joseph’s swarthy brow.

‘Tamara’s still out there.’

Daniel blinked dumbly, mouth working uselessly around confusion and pity. ‘Sorry?’

Frustration contorted Joseph’s face, made him look away and drag a shaking hand over his mouth before he could speak again, slower, more deliberately. ‘Tamara,’ he repeated. ‘Or… that copy of Tamara you made… my baby, she’s out there… this kid, he came by my house, she _sent him to me_ … Gods, I don’t…’

An indescribable knot tightened in Daniel’s chest the longer he listened. As insensible as Adama sounded, his always-quick mind was already pushing the meagre revelations together like cobblestones that might lead him to Zoe, reckless though the idea was. ‘Get in,’ he demanded softly, dropping a hand to the automatic door locks. As soon as he said it, he worried for fear of asking too much, but Joseph mutely rounded the sedan and climbed into the passenger side, silent save for the distressed tension rolling off his body in palpable waves. On a sidelong glance, Daniel could see the tight set of his jaw, the worrying gleam in his eyes that made him think twice about continuing up the drive to his house. Amanda would be waiting up for him – they should have been celebrating tonight, Gods damn it – and the idea of presenting Joseph to her filled him with a secret sort of shame.

Adama remained disturbingly quiet while Daniel turned the car around and took the main road back towards Caprica City. He was still growing accustomed to driving himself again after having dismissed that traitorous chauffeur, and he cringed his silent embarrassment when his nervousness made him miss the correct turning but Joseph made no comment on his poor navigation, didn’t even seem to notice when they pulled up to the side entrance of the Red Glove Gym.

If anything, Adama’s lack of a wry remark on his choice of meeting place only made Daniel more anxious on the man’s behalf.

He let them into the boxing club using his member’s access code and navigated the narrow corridors in silence with Joseph trailing close behind, neglecting the lights until they reached the central gym. A handful of lamps flooded the ring and cast just enough light to pick out a few chairs among the punching bags. ‘Care to sit?’ Daniel offered cautiously, dragging one of the folding metal chairs closer to the lit ring.

‘No.’

‘Fine.’ He left the chair where it stood, opting instead to trail Joseph’s pacing gait around the parameter of the ring. ‘Going to tell me what this is about, then?’

‘Frak you.’ Joseph spun to glare at him from across the corner of the ring, taut ropes doing nothing to deflect the bitter heat in his eyes. ‘This is all your fault, so why don’t _you_ tell me what’s going on?’

‘Because I _don’t know_.’ His tense, impatient shout echoed too loudly in the abandoned gym, stopping Daniel short as he struggled to rein in his temper. Bad enough that Adama was already on edge. ‘What’s this about your daughter’s avatar?’ he tried again. ‘What makes you think she wasn’t deleted?’

Joseph’s scowl darkened at Daniel’s unavoidably patronizing tone, but he took a steadying breath through his flaring nostrils, rallying to speak. ‘Some boy came to my door tonight, asked for me by name. He said…’ His lips pressed tight, visibly pained. ‘He said Tamara had sent him to me. He had _seen_ her, in your virtual reality thing…’

Daniel stifled the absurd pride he felt at Joseph naively declaring V-World as _his_ , and tried to focus on this bizarre tale instead. ‘It could have been a prank,’ he suggested thoughtfully. ‘What was this kid like?’

‘Frakked if I know,’ Joseph snapped impatiently, pacing the ring once more with eyes firmly planted on his shoes. ‘Skinny,’ he added off-handedly, almost despite himself. ‘Skinny, pale sort of boy, like he didn’t get out much. Socially awkward, nervous.’

 _Like a stereotypical holo-band addict._ Daniel winced uncomfortably to himself. ‘Maybe, if he hacked into the network,’ he mused softly, ‘gone down deep enough… there might have been a data remnant. He could have seen a visual echo, or…’

‘He didn’t know she was _dead_.’

Startled, Daniel stared openly at Joseph across the expanse of the ring. The constricted knot in his chest tightened around his hammering heart. His hand reached out for one of the lower ropes, needing some means of support.

‘He _talked_ to her… she gave him my name, my address… he didn’t know…’ Joseph was rambling now, eyes frantic, fist banging on the edge of the ring. ‘How could he think she was alive?’ he asked finally, pleadingly.

The possibility pumped faster through Daniel’s veins, invigorating his limbs and making them act beyond his conscious will. The fastest route to Joseph was a straight line, so Daniel hoisted himself into the ring and crossed its scuffed floor with long, urgent strides. He hadn’t dared hope for something like this, not after his first attempt to bring Zoe back had gone so horribly wrong, had wiped her data and broken him so completely. He thought he had killed his little girl all over again, but if Zoe had merely gone elsewhere, if she was still out there…

‘So the avatar remembered who she was?’

‘Sounds that way.’ Joseph glanced up at him with weary eyes, lips pressed resolutely tight. ‘But I don’t know, I need…’ He bit off his own words and dropped his head, sounding even more distressed as he released a hard, humourless laugh. ‘So frakking stupid…’ His muttering gave way to an incomprehensible string of Tauron. Daniel didn’t understand a word of it, but the throaty heat in Joseph’s voice made him stir with the beginnings of arousal, riding fast upon the euphoria of this amazing possibility.

With a firm shake of his head, Daniel bit his lip and squinted down at Adama from above, unable to ignore another thrum of pleasure at seeing the other man from this angle. For the first time, he noticed that Joseph was missing his usual tidy suit jacket and overcoat; besides his basic black pants, he wore nothing but a dark striped shirt that had clearly seen better treatment before tonight. The fabric was rumpled and several buttons lay undone so the shirt splayed open past his collarbones, where the skin seemed mottled with stains… with blood?

Daniel dropped to his knees and reached between the ropes. Without permission, he twitched aside the edge of the shirt with cautious fingertips, speechless at the too-dark red smudged over his olive skin.

Joseph slapped his hand away.

‘Don’t.’

‘You’re hurt.’

That got him a puzzled blink, chased down by a horrible ironic smile. Joseph glanced down at his own chest, pulling back his shirt for a better look. ‘Frak,’ he muttered. ‘Must’ve started bleeding again while I was running…’

He unbuttoned the shirt the rest of the way down, and Daniel sucked in a slightly awed breath at the strange tattoo so recently etched into his chest. Blood and ink were beading from the reddened edges of what looked like ornately paired patterns arching across the left pectoral muscle, over the heart. It was hard to see the particulars through the smeared stains.

Daniel pulled his neatly folded handkerchief from his breast pocket. It was a purely ornamental thing that matched his tie but it gave him an excuse and Joseph didn’t bat his hand away again when he began to daub at the mingled ink and blood.

‘This is new,’ he commented vaguely, eyes still riveted to the fine blue lines as they revealed themselves. Joseph huffed impatiently.

‘Yeah, you think?’

‘You don’t do this, though.’ Joseph frowned at him, so Daniel elaborated. ‘The whole Tauron… tattoo… thing.’

‘What makes you think I don’t?’

‘Your avatar doesn’t–’ A sudden blush heated the back of his neck, warning him off before he could finish the observation but Joseph was already staring suspiciously into him, dissecting the implication with a mind long accustomed to recognizing guilt as only a lawyer and a father could.

‘You’re right,’ Joseph conceded darkly, eyes narrowed. ‘This is my first… for my wife, and my daughter… but how would you know–’

Desperately, recklessly, Daniel tightened his grip on Joseph’s shirt and tugged him forward into the ropes, into a hard, unrefined kiss that killed the question dead.

This was nothing like the heated but compliant sex he had taken of Joseph’s avatar in the virtual world. Joseph’s entire body resisted him, held tight to the ropes but something in Daniel persisted in wanting this. The pride of saving his company still burned bright in his chest, his joy fueled further by the very idea that he might yet save Zoe as well.

If he could have all that, surely he could have _this_.

‘I frakked your avatar,’ he confessed in a harsh whisper. He licked at Joseph’s reticent lips, reinforcing the obscenity of what he had done while he shoved both hands beneath Joseph’s open shirt, stroking over skin he thought he’d known so well by now but the reality was so different, so slick with cooling sweat. ‘That’s how I know your body… I’ve had it so many times now…’

Joseph’s large hands settled on his shoulders, clenching painfully before shoving him away. Unprepared, Daniel toppled backward and landed abruptly on his ass and elbows, too dazed to do more than gape as Joseph climbed through the ropes and – he swallowed hard, desperately aroused – _crawled_ onto him, pinning him down with hands and knees and dark, enraged eyes.

‘You’re a frakking pervert, Greystone,’ he snarled accusingly, so much like the filth he would solicit from the avatar that Daniel couldn’t help but moan instinctively. The disgust on Joseph’s face deepened. ‘You have a _wife_ , for the Gods’ sake,’ he added, a delirious edge to his voice. ‘Your wife…’ Another unsteady laugh shook him, made Daniel tense beneath him. ‘Maybe I should’ve had Sam do her in after all… might’ve done you both a favour, hmn?’

Daniel flinched, horrified and genuinely fearful of the powerfully temperamental man holding him down. ‘How dare you,’ he rasped, jerking hard beneath Joseph’s hands. ‘You frakking bastard, if you or your lapdog of a brother so much as lay a finger on Amanda, I swear to the Gods…’

A miserable laugh took Joseph again, though his grip on Daniel held steady and sure. ‘You know I couldn’t go through with it,’ he retorted bitterly, sounding for all the worlds like that frailty was all Daniel’s fault. ‘You know Sam got her home safe and sound after all, so shut the frak up.’ Joseph scowled down at him, and must have seen his internal confusion cross his face for the way he tilted his head, eyes widening.

‘You didn’t know.’ He leaned in closer, as though wanting to inhale the very scent of Daniel’s sinking anxiety. ‘Amanda never told you about that night, did she?’

‘Frak you.’ Daniel looked resolutely to the side, closed his eyes.

‘At least you’re not the only one keeping secrets in your marriage.’

‘I don’t keep secrets from her,’ he lied stiffly.

‘Oh, so she knows you’re frakking a copy of me on the side, does she?’

Daniel bit his lip, kept his eyes firmly shut.

‘Then I’m sure she won’t mind this.’ Teeth sank hard into the soft exposed skin of his throat, and Daniel cried out his shock and anger, struggling fiercely beneath Joseph’s body to break away but a strong hand gripped his hair, held his head firmly back while Joseph sucked hard at the skin beneath his mouth. Panting fast, ashamed at his own arousal, Daniel scrabbled at Joseph’s broad frame with his one free hand, fighting to push him away and arriving at the raw skin of his tattooed chest. He pressed hard with the heel of his hand, relieved when Joseph released his throat with a pained hiss but he could already feel the beginnings of a spiteful love bite burning his flesh like a brand. Bitter and vengeful, Daniel kneaded his fingers into the tattooed skin, gratified to feel blood seep beneath his careless touch.

Joseph growled, spat out another string of Tauron that sounded unmistakably vulgar on his tongue, and snatched his wrist in a shaking grip, forcing it back down to the rubberized floor beneath them. With both hands pinned down again, Daniel writhed stubbornly, struggling for any sort of retaliation and finding nothing but a heavy erection meeting his own bucking hips, an answering pressure that ignited his lust and made his own hardness swell all the more insistently.

Almost without thought, the protests of his body settled into a different sort of rhythm, hips rolling upward to entice Joseph to bear down upon him with even greater force. He watched with feral satisfaction as Joseph’s tightened features slackened, dark eyelashes faltering downward as he fell into a tentative rutting motion on a low, heartrending moan that set shivers coursing down Daniel’s spine. Unable to move his upper body, he channeled his building frustration into his legs, spreading his thighs wider and planting his feet flat on the floor, using the added leverage to thrust back even harder.

Groaning deeply, Joseph released his wrists but dropped down ever more firmly, keeping Daniel trapped with the full length of his body while his hands tugged savagely in the narrow space between their bodies. Daniel heard the ripping of his shirt, the scatter of buttons and moaned helplessly when that brutal touch went roaming over his bare skin. His own freed hands wandered greedily in turn over Joseph’s broad shoulders, along his tensed back and down to his ass, forcing their hips tighter together, rubbing himself off against Joseph’s hard dick with wanton abandon.

‘Frak…’ Joseph growled, face buried in Daniel’s neck, pulling his hair again and biting his throat and Daniel cried out sharply and came apart, trembling and flushing with latent shame as his release seeped hot and damp into his pants. He shuddered beneath Joseph, holding his breath while the other man drew back to gaze down at him, breathing hard and fast with astonished eyes.

‘Oh, Gods,’ he gasped. Daniel winced at Joseph’s tightening grip in his sweat-tangled hair. ‘Look at you… frak…’ His other hand was scrambling downward now, Joseph fumbling impatiently at his flies and Daniel could only stare upward through a numb, post-orgasmic haze as Joseph gave his own cock several desperate strokes and, still twisting Daniel’s hair in a punishing grip, came messily all over his ruined shirt and exposed chest.

Joseph rolled off of him soon after his orgasm, slumping depleted to the floor of the boxing ring. Absently, Daniel skimmed shaking fingers through Joseph’s come slicking his skin, letting the stunned aftershocks fade to satiated warmth. He felt claimed, even demeaned, but thrumming beneath it all was selfish, irrational pleasure.

Letting his head loll easily to the side, he saw that Joseph was not faring so well. He had tucked himself away and done up his pants, but lay hauntingly still on his back, staring up at the floodlights with disbelief written plainly across his face. A twinge of unexpected sympathy cut through Daniel’s satisfaction, and when he rummaged his cigarette case from his disheveled jacket he plucked one out for Joseph as well, lighting both between his lips before wordlessly passing the second along. Joseph eyed it warily, but accepted with a distracted nod, sitting upright and pulling his knees up to his bared chest while he sullenly smoked through his visible anxiety, tightly coiled compared to Daniel’s own boneless sprawl, flat on his back with thighs still achingly splayed.

‘If she’s still out there,’ he offered softly, exhaling a plume of smoke, ‘I’ll help you find her.’

Joseph winced, a self-deprecating twist to his mouth. ‘What, because we frakked?’ he sneered.

‘Hardly,’ Daniel scoffed, taking another drag of his cigarette. ‘If Tamara’s avatar survived, it means Zoe might still be out there. I need to know as much as you do.’ He exhaled, memories of far filthier acts with Adama’s avatar drifting away with the smoke. ‘And it’s not like I haven’t had your body already.’

Fierce anger burned in Joseph’s glare, his own cigarette flaring bright on a hard inhale. ‘Fine,’ he conceded darkly. He ground out his unfinished cigarette on the rubber matting, burning a permanent hole among the scuffmarks of countless fighters before them. ‘Go play with your little frak-toy all you want, doesn’t make a damn difference to me.’

Joseph shifted closer as he prepared to stand, close enough to rub a calloused thumb over the bruise suckled onto Daniel’s neck. ‘At least, nowhere near the difference this will make when you go home to your wife,’ he added, eyes narrowed maliciously.

Daniel cringed, chilled speechless while he watched Joseph push to his feet and button his shirt, leaving his collar tantalizingly undone.

‘Don’t worry, Greystone, I’m sure you’ll come up with a nice excuse,’ he mocked dryly. ‘And you already know what my silence is going to cost you.’

When Joseph climbed down from the ring and stalked out of the gym, all his shame had long since melted away. Propped up on his elbows, Daniel watched the solidity of his swagger recede into darkness with mixed trepidation and longing, cigarette dangling forgotten between his fingers.

He would help that man find his daughter, he knew, but not out of kindness or even selfishness.

For fear and lust, he simply had no choice.


End file.
